


Callooh! Callay!

by whiplash



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Fluff and Angst, Gen, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1473511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiplash/pseuds/whiplash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there's definitely no such a thing as witches, but the Musketeers still end up looking after a de-aged Aramis. (Kink meme fill.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** "Aramis is somehow deaged. (I prefer that it would be a 4-5 years old kid) And the others must look after him."
> 
>  **Author's Note:** I'm a little embarrassed to put my name to this one, but, well, it can't be worse than my 'Aramis as a Disney princess' fill, right? ;-)

The grown-ups had begun fighting again.  
  
They spoke in hushed voices, though occasionally an angry word or two would drift over to the chair where the boy waited. Too short to reach the ground, he sat kicking with his legs in the air, politely hiding a yawn behind his hand every few minutes.  
  
It had been exciting at first -- the soldiers with their strange leather armour and shiny weapons, the horses with their soft eyes and quick, strong legs and then Paris, so much bigger and louder and dirtier than he could ever have imagined -- but now he'd had enough. His stomach kept grumbling for supper and his legs hurt from riding too far and too fast. He'd grown tired of adventuring. He wanted to go home. He wanted his mother.  
  
The tall one with the dark skin and the studded collar raised his voice, only to be shushed by the man they called Captain. The boy yawned again, stretching his neck in an attempt to peer out through the window. There were more soldiers outside, he knew. They'd been practising with their swords when he'd arrived some hours ago.  
  
"It's impossible!" the tall man growled again.  
  
They kept using that word. Impossible. The boy's mother always claimed that nothing was impossible. He just had to try harder. Of course, she usually said that when he complained about writing his letters or memorizing the lines she'd given him. Some things, no doubt, were truly impossible. Like standing on your head and drinking water. Or counting all the stars that came out at night.  
  
He squirmed in his seat, torn between not wanting to interrupt the grown-up's conversation and not wanting to embarrass himself by wetting his pants like a baby. He was, after all, going to be six years old come summer. He could reach the hatch to the chicken coop by himself now and carry the wood basket all the way from the front door to the hearth as long as it wasn't more than half full. It wouldn't do for such a big boy to make a mess.  
  
"Excuse me," he piped up, voice shrill and high.  
  
The four men all turned to look at him. They looked less fierce now than they had when they'd found him, though the tall one still glowered at him. The boy didn't meet his eyes, focusing instead on the Captain. He had a funny little moustache, all pointy at the edges, but his face looked as stern as the village priest's and he had both a sword and a pistol hanging on his belt.  
  
"May I be excused, please?" the boy said, sliding down from the chair. His tongue nearly tripped over the phrase that his mother had drilled into him, but he was fairly sure the words all came out in the right order.  
  
"To do what?" the Captain demanded, frowning down at him.  
  
The boy felt his ears grow hot. Certain things, he knew, you weren't supposed to say out loud. Especially not to strangers.  
  
To his surprise, the tall one burst out laughing. It changed his entire face, and the boy forgot, for a moment, all about his full bladder as he stared up at the wide smile and the deep wrinkles around the man's eyes. His mother laughed like that sometimes, though her mouth was much smaller and her laughter didn't boom and echo between the walls.  
  
"The boy needs to piss," the tall man said. "Just look at him hopping around like a frog."  
  
All the good will that the laughter had built disappeared in a heartbeat and he frowned up at the giant. Size didn't matter so much anyway. He knew the story of David and Goliath. And what more, he knew how to make a slingshot.  
  
"My name's not boy," he said crossly, forgetting his manners for a moment. "It's Aramis."

xxx

Aramis ended up leaving the garrison on the heels of the youngest one of the soldiers, a man with a thin and beardless face. He introduced himself as d'Artagnan and for every step he took, Aramis had to take three. Though the quick pace soon left him tired, he didn't dare slow down lest his guide disappeared forever around a corner. As little as he knew and trusted these men, they were clearly respectable soldiers in the service of the king. He was surely better off with them than he would be abandoned by himself in the middle of a city so foreign it might as well have been in a different country.  
  
After a while a loose cobble stones tripped him up and he landed on his hands and knees in the muck. A toothless man in dirty clothes begun laughing, and another man, leading a donkey tied to a cart, cursed as the sudden disturbance forced him to veer to the right. Aramis listened with fearful fascination as he scrambled to his feet, wiping his hands against his trousers and stepping to the side to allow the cart to pass. His mother, he knew, would not approve of such godless language and yet he couldn't help but memorize some of the worst expressions.  
  
d'Artagnan's head popped back from around the corner, his eyes wild until he spotted Aramis standing by the wall.  
  
"Hey," he scolded, weaving between the people on the street with practiced ease. "You have to stick close to me. Believe me, you don't want to get lost here!"  
  
The man paused as he came closer, his frown deepening as he took in the soiled clothes and the skinned knees. The boy tensed, expecting to be lectured further, but to his surprise d'Artagnan just knelt down beside him without seeming to notice or care that by doing so his own clothes ended up dirty. Fishing out a handkerchief he wiped first at Aramis' face and then at his hands. It mostly just smeared the mud around and after a while he stopped, shrugging in philosophical acceptance before tucking the dirty fabric square back into his sleeve. Grabbing Aramis by the arms, he then slung him up into the air and over his shoulders so that the boy ended up straddling his shoulders.  
  
When d'Artagnan stood up, Aramis could see the entire street stretched out in front of them. There were women and men -- old and young, fat and thin, some wearing fancy clothes while others wore nothing but rags -- walking side by side, jostling each other's shoulders like children might. Cats slept on window sills and next to chimney tops while dogs rooted in the garbage for food. Everywhere he looked, there was life and motion. Captivated by all the details -- the man carrying around strings of sausage on a stick, the old lady selling roasted chestnuts, the children poking at a sleeping drunk with a stick -- he all but forgot about the man carrying him until d'Artagnan put him back down on his feet.  
  
"Now listen," he said, all of a sudden looking nervous. "The lady you're about to meet is Madame Bonnacieux. We're going to tell her that you're the nephew of... a friend of mine. You were supposed to stay with your uncle for a few days, but he had to go away so now I'm looking after you instead."  
  
Aramis frowned. He didn't have an uncle who lived in Paris. As far as he knew, he didn't have an uncle at all.  
  
"Your name's..." d'Artagnan faltered, looking around as if searching for inspiration. "Alexandre."  
  
"No," Aramis corrected, beginning to wonder if perhaps this d'Artagnan was a bit slow. "It's Aramis."  
  
d'Artagnan made a face, drumming his fingers against his leg. The miller had a son, big as an ox with hands like shovels, whose speech was hard to understand and who sometimes fell asleep in church. He had a dog, with only one ear and a stub for a tail, which he allowed the children to play with and once he'd helped Aramis to put a baby bird back in its nest. The men in town said he was slow, but Aramis mother would just shake her head at such talk. She said that those slow of thought or sick in body were God's special children and that it was their duty, as good Christians, to always be kind and patient with them. Aramis reminded himself of this as d'Artagnan opened his mouth again.  
  
"I know that," the young man said, "but I thought we could maybe tell her that it's Alexandre."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because..." d'Artagnan's mouth opened and closed like a fish's, sealing his fate as far as as Aramis was concerned. "It's a good name."  
  
Kind and patient, Aramis reminded himself, reaching out to grab d'Artagnan's hand in his own.  
  
"As you want," he agreed.  
  
His mother, he knew, would be proud of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few paragraphs in which they discuss what would be considered child abuse by today's standards, but which wasn't considered as such back in 1630. If you want to skip that part, you can stop reading at _'It was one thing, after all-'_ and start again at _'Will you throw me-'_.

The next day, he was left in the care of the quiet man dressed in black leather. Athos, they'd said his name was, though Aramis was pretty sure that was actually the name of a mountain.  
  
"I asked Constance," d'Artagnan explained, "but she said she had more work to do than the lot of us combined and that we couldn't just expect her to drop everything to baby-sit one of our-"  
  
There he stopped, giving Aramis a look which the boy knew meant that he'd been about to say something interesting which children weren't meant to know about until they got older. Occupying himself with taking another nibble from the soft bun that Madame Bonnacieux had given him that morning, Aramis did his best to look busy.  
  
"She didn't believe me," d'Artagnan continued in a whisper. "She thinks he's Aramis' bast-"  
  
"Yes, well," Athos sighed, "who can blame her. Makes more sense than the truth."  
  
They both made a funny face at that, their foreheads wrinkling and their mouths twisting as if they'd tasted something sour or maybe eaten a worm. Aramis couldn't help but laugh then, crumbs spraying from his mouth which made him laugh even harder until he accidentally inhaled a piece of bread and begun coughing instead. Porthos -- that was the name of the tall and scowly one -- patted him hard on the back.  
  
"She said she'd exchange words with him the next time she saw him," d'Artagnan hurried on, as if eager to change the subject. "From the look on her face, I think she means to slap him around the face again."  
  
"Well, she can get in line," Porthos rumbled before standing up and straightening his belt. "We better go. Treville has a lead on the..."  
  
He trailed off, scowl deepening.  
  
"Witch?" d'Artagnan suggested, only for the two other men to glare at him.  
  
"There's no such a thing as witches," Athos said.  
  
He didn't sound convinced though.  
  
xxx  
  
Athos turned out to be terribly boring for a man in possession of both a twisted lip and a sword.  
  
He had a stack of old and worn books balancing precariously on his table and apparently intended to spend the entire day reading them. Aramis had peeked into one of the books, but the words were hard to make out and the pictures in the margins made him feel uncomfortable. Besides, Athos had scolded him for touching them.  
  
So, instead Aramis sat on the lumpy bed, eating chestnuts and blowing into an empty glass bottle which he'd found nestled next to the pillow. It made different noises, depending on how hard he blew and how he shaped his lips but as interesting as that was he still found himself bored after a while. His legs itched with the need to run and jump, but Athos kept reading no matter how hard the boy cleared his throat.  
  
Eventually he gave up -- figuring it perhaps better to ask forgiveness than permission anyway -- and wriggled down from the bed to investigate the room. A cross and a sword hung over the bed and the floor was littered with empty bottles. The boy gathered them all, counting them to be no less than twelve, and blew in each one of them. He soon found that not two of them produced the exact same noise!  
  
The odd shapes of the bottles gave him an idea, and soon he had begun building a cathedral. The glass caught and reflected the dancing sun beams that peaked in through the curtains. Aramis arranged and re-arranged the bottles until he reached perfection. Stepping back to admire his work, he felt a deep pang of sadness that he wouldn't be able to show it to his parents.  
  
"Monsieur Athos," he said instead. "Monsieur Athos!"  
  
"Mmm?" came the answer from where Athos sat squinting at the pages of a heavy volume.  
  
"Look!"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"Look at what I did!"  
  
"Mm."  
  
Just like that Aramis' beautiful cathedral became nothing more than a tower of old, smelly bottles. Tears pricking his eyes, he pulled his foot back and kicked as hard as he could. The clattering as the bottles fell took him by surprise, as did the fact that some of them broke; shards of glass showering over the room.

Before the boy could draw breath to cry out, he found himself up in the air.  
  
Athos, his eyes as wide and round as a rabbit's, held him by the arms, his fingers digging deep into the boy's flesh. Aramis didn't struggle though, just hung there limply as Athos, glass crunching under his heavy boots, carried him back to the bed.  
  
"Are you hurt?" he asked, brushing his hands over the boy's hands and arms to check for cuts.  
  
Aramis shook his head, afraid to speak. His heart beat a hard and angry rhythm in his chest and his eyes burned with unshed tears. He wasn't sure at all whether he was more angry or scared. No one asked him how he felt though, so he just stood there, as still and stiff as if he'd been carved in wood, while Athos lifted his feet to brush careful fingers over his bare soles.  
  
Behind Athos, the boy could see the mess he'd made; giant shards of broken glass, surrounded by glittering pieces so small that they might as well just be sand or pebbles. Aramis wondered, hands clenched hard by his sides, if the bottles had been _very_ expensive. He didn't have any coins of his own, of course, but he knew that his father had been putting away a few derniers each week so that Aramis could have a new pair of boots. Perhaps they could now give those coins to Athos instead.  
  
Athos, finally seeming satisfied that Aramis' naughtiness hadn't resulted in him hurting himself, turned around to stare out at the floor. He blinked a few times, as if it wasn't until then that he realized what had happened. Then he went still, looking around the room with a strange and unhappy look on his face. The boy squirmed, sure that the man's narrow eyes were searching for other things which Aramis might also have broken.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said, speaking quickly. "I didn't touch anything else, promise."  
  
"Mm."  
  
For as long as the boy could remember, his father had told him that a good man always owned up to his mistakes. Even so, Aramis had to fight the urge to run away and hide. It was one thing, after all, to be in trouble with one's own parents; at worst they would box his ears or swat him on the backside over his breeches. He'd never been in trouble with a stranger before though. Anything could happen.  
  
Other adults, he knew, were usually far stricter than his own parents. After all, weren't his friend Claude's skinny, nut-brown legs frequently marred with bruises and welts left behind by his father's belt? And wasn't there, right there in the corner of Athos' room, a spare belt hanging over the back of a chair? As if, perhaps Athos had known all along that Aramis wouldn't be able to be good the entire day...  
  
Aramis swallowed hard, then straightened his back through sheer force of will.  
  
"Will you use the belt?" he asked. His temporary guardian jumped as if stung by a bee.  
  
"What?" he asked, blinking at Aramis as if he'd forgotten that he wasn't alone in the room.  
  
"The belt," Aramis clarified, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. "Will you -"  
  
"No!" The answer came so fast and with such conviction that it was almost a blow in itself. Athos shook his head, his eyes jumping from the belt to Aramis and then back at the belt as if he wasn't sure how either one of them came to be in his chamber. "God, no."  
  
Aramis bit his lip, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He was relieved, of course, but at the same time his fantasy now begun to run rampant. If he wasn't going to hit him, then what would Athos to do to him? There was a sudden wobble in Aramis' legs as another thought hit him.  
  
"Will you throw me in the King's dungeons?" he demanded, and this time his voice broke.  
  
"What? No! Aramis, _please_. I'm not going to do anything. It was just an accident."  
  
The boy continued to worry at his lip. It hadn't been an accident. Not at all.  
  
"Will you send me to bed without supper?"  
  
"Not for breaking some old wine bottles, no." Looking around in the room, Athos then added in a voice so quiet that maybe it wasn't really meant for Aramis; "Though perhaps I should send myself off to bed without supper."


End file.
